Narrative The phone rang. I watched the red light on the device flash intermittently, and was momentarily paralyzed. A dizzying array of buttons stared back at me from the black plastic receiver, and I wished the noise would go away. I looked down at my grandmother. She did not seem to notice the phone at all. She had barely shown any sign of consciousness today, although her eyes were open and I saw her chest rising and falling as methodically as a metronome.

A nurse appeared in the doorway.

"It's your father," she said firmly, looking directly in my eyes. "How's she doing?"

Startled out of my temporary paralysis, I replied reluctantly that my grandmother was "okay," not really knowing what to say given that there were only degrees of badness at this point.

"Your father said he's on his way," the nurse simply stated before walking away, leaving me alone once more with my grandmother.

I felt afraid. Grandmother looked so frail and I could see...

Father was coming. I did not want to see him now, but I wanted to keep my spirits high so I put on the television in the hopes that it would offer a diversion from the misery that was my grandmother in her dying days.
My eyes darted back and forth between the television and the soft, wrinkled face of my grandmother.

"In other news today, a man was shot on the corner of 57th Street and 49th Avenue. The suspect was seen driving a red SUV. If you have any tips, please call Crimestoppers."

My grandmother was obviously not paying attention to the television. I wondered what she could be thinking about. Was she thinking about that time we had a family dinner at Red Lobster and my brother found a cockroach in his salad? She laughed so hard I saw tears coming out of the corner of her eyes. What about the time she took me to baseball practice? I was mortified when she started yelling at me when I dropped the ball in mid-field. I had no idea she was…